Paul Mauriat - Love Is Blue (1967)

Paul Mauriat (1925-2006) was born in Marseille, France. He began playing music at the age of four and, by his twenties, began a dance band that toured throughout Europe during World War II. In the 1950s, Mauriat was the musical director for Charles Aznavour and Maruice Chevalier, whom he toured with, separately. He released his first album in 1957 and would release well over one hundred more in his lifetime. Interestingly, depending on the motif of his most-current album, he would choose a pseudonym to release the album under which he felt most matched the music. Examples of pseudonyms he used include Richard Audrey, Nico Papadopoulos, Eduardo Ruo, and Willy Twist. Using the pseudonym “Del Roma,” Mauriat co-composed the song “Chariot” which would later be adapted to English and taken to number one spot on the charts in 1963 as “I Will Follow Him” by Little Peggy March.

Seeing another artist take one of his songs to the top of the charts wasn’t the only time Mauriat would find himself in the number one spot. In 1967, Mauriat recorded and released a cover of André Popp’s “L'amour est bleu,” heard below. The song spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968, the first instrumental to achieve the number one spot since The Tornados' “Telstar” in 1962. The only instrumental to hold the top spot of the Hot 100 longer was Percy Faith’s “Theme from a Summer Place.”



Paul Mauriat - Love Is Blue (1967)

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Lyrics:

(instrumental)